Many medical journals lack ghostwriting policies

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Most major medical journals don't spell out how they handle the omission from a published study's author list of a person who substantially contributed to the work, according to a new study from Spain. So called ghostwriting raises concerns about the validity of research findings because it can involve researchers submitting as their own work an article that was largely drafted by a pharmaceutical company's paid writers, for example. Of 399 peer-reviewed medical journals the new study's authors analyzed, they found that only one in ten defined ghostwriting and even fewer had written policies on how they detect or respond to the practice - considered by many to be misconduct.